Our Life Without School

A Little Christmas Cheer - Wordless Wednesday

2011-12-14T20:10:00.000-08:00

Getting Ready

2011-09-05T14:53:00.001-07:00

Looks like I am as ready as I'll ever be to start lessons tomorrow! I'm praying hard for a productive year, wisdom to fit it all into our busy schedule and gobs of patience for everyone!

This year I plan to print out a weekly list of things that need to be done along with any extras that are going on that week. My kids like to know ahead of time what's going on.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

April 1st 2011

2011-04-02T06:01:00.000-07:00

Well, it's that time of year when we start slacking off a bit. The blog is no exception. Today I am determined to post an update that shows what we did this past month. So without further ado, here is a summary of the entire month of March:

READING

We read aloud Carry On Mr. Bowditch (loved it!)

We are now reading aloud Johnny Tremain (another favorite!)

Quinn has been reading The Ranger's Apprentice series and River of Danger

Evelyn has read The Cabin Faced West, Childhood of Martha Washington and she has been working on a new series call Adventure in the Northwoods

Leah loves to hear The Very Hungry Caterpillar over and over again. She also loves to "read" it to us. It is fun to hear her rendition. We are getting ready for a trip to The Butterfly Place soon so this is a perfect choice. Leah has also been picking up speed with phonics. She now has 13 letters that she knows very well. She is also showing a lot more interest now than she was in the beginning of the year. She frequently recognizes letters in print and points them out to everyone very excitedly. She is very good at constructing letters with whatever she has on hand from crackers to sticks etc...

Math

Quinn worked on the first fifteen lessons in Singapore 6A and I s now working through the first review. Mostly it is fractions and ratios.

Evelyn has finished lesson 39 and is working on review 4 in Singapore 2B.

Leah has been making a number book. She enjoys doing the various activities in the new Singapore Early Bird book. However I don't like the new version very much. She also really likes the Mathtacular video #1 and LeapFrog: Numbers Ahoy.

Science !!

Yes! You heard correctly we have started science again! The first half of the school year we did no formal science. And I was fine with that. We had a very science heavy year last year. Quinn took three science classes and Evelyn took 2. So I had no problem with the time off however my kids were looking forward to starting again. I was waiting for funds because I wanted to get something all inclusive. I HATE spending time hunting down all of the supplies. I would rather just buy the kit. I ended up going with Noeo Science. We have used them in the past and enjoyed it. I got Chemistry 1 for Evelyn and Chemistry 2 for Quinn. Quinn is basically on his own. I gave him the schedule and am checking his work. So far he has surprised me with his motivation even doing the writing without complaining. Although he does need to to work on using a few more words on his lab sheets.

Field Trips

Boston Museum of Science

We had a great day in Boston with friends.

The Childrens Museum of New Hampshire

It was a beautiful spring day and we ventured to Dover to visit the Children's Museum. Everyone had lots of fun.

Cirque Mechanics: Boom Town
This was such a unique show. the kids' eyes were glued to the stage.

Gunstock
We ended the ski season with a trip to Gunstock. Quinn had two friends spend the weekend and ski. They loved it. I am ready for spring now.

Art

We are working on making a large spring themed mural in our entryway. So far the kids painted some trees on brown craft paper and made some colorful birds using the painted paper we made. Yesterday we added a few flowers. We have lots more to add in the coming weeks.

February 25, 2011

2011-02-26T07:20:00.000-08:00

These past two weeks......

....Quinn read Blackthorn Winter and started Ranger's Apprentice book 1

....Evelyn read Young George Washington and Rachel Yoder book 8

....Leah enjoyed listening to The Very Hungry Caterpillar over and over again.. She also liked Mouse Paint and Mouse Count

....Together they made valentines for the kids in their CBS classes.

Evelyn made this valentine for her brother.

...Together we made painted paper for some upcoming art projects

...Quinn finished Singapore 5b. The last few lessons were on volume and then there was a review. There were definitely some topics in the review that he could use a little more practice with. Next week I plan to do a bit more review before starting 6a.

...Together we had fun doing some projects from these two new books that I recently ordered. We made a 3d map of Jamestown and of Columbus' voyage. These are history topics that we covered much earlier in the year but wanted to do them anyways.

Together we went to see Derek Small from Wildlife Encounters put on another animal show at the library. I am amazed at how Derek's business has taken off. I remember when we were members of the New Hampshire Herpatological Society together ten years ago. I also used to babysit his two girls. Now he has a very successful business educating people about exotic animals. He has even been on many tv shows.

... Evelyn and I had a wonderful opportunity to go see the New York Theatre Ballet with friends one night. They performed The Alice in Winderland Follies. It was incredible!

....Together they skied

My How the Time Flies! 2/13/2011

2011-02-13T18:13:00.000-08:00

Well, it has been a month since my last post. I'm not sure what the problem has been other than standard homeschool craziness! I am sooo looking forward to spring at this point. I am not sure how I ended up with winter loving children. (Particularly my son.) I'm good for about a month of winter and then I'm all set. Luckily it has been snowy however. There is nothing worse than a boring cold winter with no exciting weather.

Here are some of our exciting accomplishments this past month!

Reading

We had two read alouds this month: Toliver's Secret and now Carry On Mr. Bowditch. The latter I am enjoying immensely. I don't think i have ever read it.

Evelyn has read: The last four books in the Rachel Yoder series, Young George Washington, Bears on Hemlock Mountain, and of course anything else she can get her hands on.
Quinn: I have been having Quinn read through some of the books on this year's book list that are way below his reading level just so that he will have read them. Many are classics and I want him to have read them. He reads them in a matter of minutes and doesn't seem to mind that they are so easy. Some of them are: Bears on Hemlock Mountain, Skippack School, The matchlock Gun and Phoebe the Spy. He is also trudging along in Treasure Island.
Leah's current favorites that she always wants Evelyn to read to her are I Miss You Father Bear and My Mother is Mine.
I am currently reading One Thousand Gifts and Same Kind of Different as Me :)

Math

Quinn is at the very end of 5b. He's working on geometry. These past few weeks he has had a lot of new math terms and geometry rules to learn. I had him make a poster of some quadrilaterals the other day and will probably have him make one for the different types of triangles. I also added most of the definitions and rules to Quinn's Anki deck.
Evelyn is moving much faster through 2a now that she has moved on the basic multiplication. I am glad we stopped and I had her learn her times tables via Times Tales last summer. She is whizzing through now.
I had told Quinn he needed to do some extra math to make up for some missed work one week. I forgot to assign it however and at the last moment my husband offered to make up a word problem for him. The word problem was quite lengthy and included many steps and many answers. Quinn was very reluctant to do it until his dad offered him five dollars to finish it... Hmmm...I never thought to pay my children to do their schoolwork before..Anyways, Quinn did it and got all but one of the answers right so his dad cut him a check for four bucks.

History

We recently changed our history up a bit. We stopped reading Landmark history of the American People and now we are reading Story of the World Volume 3 and Hakim's History of US Volume 3. Things are moving much more smoothly now. The kids each made a map of the thirteen colonies and labeled them. Some of the things we read about this past month were King Charles I and the Duke of York. There were some nice narrations and interesting drawings to go with them.

evelyn

Quinn

evelyn

Leah
Leah has been working on writing her name, learning the sounds for various letters, writing letters in her rice tray and on paper and making her letter book. She also loves listening to stories the kids or I read to her and she loves listening to audio books with the older kids. As a result of having Leah around Quinn and Evelyn have resurrected some of the audio books that they haven't enjoyed in a long time such as several of the classical kids stories and some of the younger Story Nory stories. She loves art and music and has been enjoying skiing (for the most part!).

Other

We went to see Seussical The musical at The Capitol Center for the Arts! There was some fun music and many familiar characters. even Quinn enjoyed it!

Baggins loves to hang out with us during school. As far as distractions go, he's one of the best!

Cooking

The kids haven't done nearly as much baking as they have in past months. Mostly because...well...baking leads to eating and I am trying to avoid that! Today however, Evelyn made cupcakes while her brother was out with friends. So much for a low sugar day for me!!

they were yummy!

A New Year 1/15/2011

2011-01-16T12:23:00.000-08:00

These past two weeks:

we finished The Witch of Blackbird Pond
Leah listened to some old favorites around here such as: Blueberries for Sal, The Salamander Room and Make Way for Ducklings.
Evelyn read books 1 - 4 of the Rachel Yoder series, The Smugglers Treasure and Almost Home: A Story Based on the Life of the Mayflower's Mary Chilton

Quinn read the first two books of The 100 Cupboards trilogy, The Skippak School and he started reading Treasure Island.

We worked on making Story Sequence Charts for The Jabberwocky. Hopefully next week I can report on how that turned out!
We completed Lesson 4 in Who is God?

I'm really not loving the Sonlight history this year. The book Landmark History of the American People just seems really dull and unnecessarily difficult for the ages I am teaching. I understand their defense of the book on the website but I just can't swing it. It is making history dull for us so I have gone back to The Story of the World Volume 3. Hopefully now we can make up for some lost time here! For now though we have been working on learning about the thirteen colonies.

Quinn is working on averaging in Singapore 5b

Evelyn's mental math abilities are really coming along. I have been able to help her by modeling the problems with the base ten set and then gradually having her do steps in her head instead of with the manipulatives.

Over the vacation I worked on moving all of the kids' memory work to Anki. It is a similar program to that which I use to study Scrabble anagrams before a tournament. Their memory work has been rapidly outgrowing the little recipe box over the past few years plus ANki will space out the cards based on how well the child knows the information. So far it has been a great change. I can even record my own voice for the french vocab.
Leah has been working on making an alphabet book which involves spotting, cutting out and gluing letters and pictures from magazines. Here is a picture of her working on her 'F' page and on writing some of her letters.

We started Volume 2 in our Bible study on the book of Acts. Currently we are in chapter 16.

After a half year break we resumed dictation. I placed Quinn in list 17 and Evelyn in list 31. One change I have made this time around is to have Quinn write out any missed words three times WHILE saying out loud the spelling. He usually responds well to auditory methods of learning. So far I have noticed an improvement in his ability to remember how to spell words he got wrong previously. Evelyn doesn't spell words wrong so that is a break for me. I am thinking of getting her an independent spelling program like Phonetic Zoo or something.

We made some beautiful winter trees together. I have several art blogs that I LOVE and get great ideas from. This one came from http://www.artprojectsforkids.org/

Leah

Evelyn

Quinn

We started Ski Club directly after vacation. Once a week we ski all day with our friends instead of doing lessons. (homeschooled kids have it so rough!) We were blessed to have someone lend us some tiny skis for Leah. As I predicted she took to it pretty quickly. The only problem now is to delay her from getting on the lift. Luckily we have several wonderful teenagers in our group who enjoy taking the little ones up! I only have pics and videos of Leah so far since I rarely see my own kids when at the mountain. I will try to get some pics of them next week.

December School

2011-01-05T18:32:00.000-08:00

It has been a few weeks! Christmas has come and gone. I figured I will do one giant report for the whole month. I am looking forward to getting back into the swing of things next week. But for now I am enjoying a low key month. We kept up with regular lessons through the 17th and then took the rest of the month "off" (if there is such a thing). Here is a run down of some school work and some not-so-schoolish work that we have been busying ourselves with.

Reading

Together we are continuing through our Advent book, Tabitha's Travels.
We are still reading aloud The Witch of Blackbird Pond. It has been our slowest read aloud this year. Partially because, with Christmas approaching, we have had many late nights where our read aloud time is cut short or nonexistant. It also isn't a favorite of the kids'. Evelyn doesn't mind it but Quinn can't stand all of the "romance" and people "falling in love with each other" as he puts it. I think the story is awesome. I remember loving it as a kid but had forgotten much of the story. Either way it has helped them to get an understanding of Puritans and Quakers and the problems faced by the two groups back then.
Evelyn's independant reading has consisted of: Ben Franklin of Old Philadelphia, Phoebe the Spy and several non-school related books.
Quinn read Mr. Revere and I, Young George Washington, The 39 Clues 9 & 10, and is starting the trilogy The 100 Cupboards.
We are having fun reading many old favorites to Leah such as Caps For Sale, Click Clack Moo and many others.
For years we have LOVED Story Nory for free stories narrated by a wonderfully dramatic and enthusiastic storyteller named Natashia. It is well known in the homeschooling crowd but I just wanted to put a shout out in case anyone is looking for great stuff to put on their mp3 players. This past month we have been listening to The Christmas Carol and The Nutcracker as well as several other favorites of ours from StoryNory. Leah LOVES Natasha's version of The Three Little Pigs and laughs uncontrollably everytime the pigs say "chinny chin chin".
We love the dramatized audio Bible Word of Promise and have been listening to the account of Jesus' birth from all four Gospels.

Math

Quinn completed through lesson 20 in 5b. He is working on percents. Changing fractions to percents and percents to fractions and decimals to percents etc.... He has caught on quickly. Let's hope that after the break he will remember some!

Evelyn is continuing a little more quickly through her book. She seems to be grasping the concepts a little more now. I have been having her do five minute math drills to help her pick up some speed with her math facts. Every correct answer earns her a minute on her DS later that day. A good reward considering video games are generally pretty limited during the week.

Writing

We completed another unit III assignment. This time we did The Fox and the Crow. Both kids had fun with this one and it was a tad shorter than the last. I am thinking we will do one more Unit III after ther break then move on to Unit IV.

ART

Lots of self initiated creativity occured like usual as well as some Mark Kistler drawing lessons.

Evelyn drew Baggins and then decided to add the girl
looking in so taped on another piece of paper.

Quinn's boat from two perspectives from a Mark Kistler drawing lesson

Evelyn loves to draw people on stage in extravagent costumes.

Quinn likes to draw tanks, cannons and other things that fire!

Quinn also likes to draw scenes from video games.
This is from plants Vs. Zombies.

DANCE

Evelyn had her dance recital. Each age group performed a jazz routine and a ballet routine. Also one of their teachers performed. The kids really loved to watch one of their teachers dance.

RANDOM OTHER STUFF

Quinn made cookies for his CBS Christmas party

COOKIE DECORATING
Every year we have at least one cookie painting session. This year we had two. Once with friends.

The kids attended a homeschool class on aviation at The McAuliffe Shepard Discovery Center. The 5th-8th graders got to use Flight Simulation programs and the 1st-4th graders did various projects to learn about planes and flight. They had a lot of fun.

Leah and I amused ourselves for two hours during the classes. Her favorite activity was the Walk on the Sun.

Week 13

2010-12-03T18:58:00.000-08:00

We took last week off and enjoyed a yummy Thanksgiving with family. As usual after a break, it took some time for all of us to get back into things this Monday. I am not even quite sure we ever completely did! December usually ends up being a little light in the school department for us. In fact in years past we have taken the entire month off and focused just on Advent type activities. Not this year though!

Reading

We are continuing through The Witch of Blackbird Pond
Quinn read Blood on the River: Jamestown, 1607, Meet George Washington, The 39 Clues #8 and Ben Franklin of Old Philadelphia
Evelyn read The Diary of Remember Patience Whipple
Some of the books we read to Leah this week were: Caps for Sale and Going on a Bear Hunt
We started our Advent story. This year we are doing Tabitha's Travels. It is the third book in a fun Advent series by Arnold Ytreeide. The first is Jotham's Journey and the second is Bartholemew's Passage. The kids look forward to it every year. They couldn't wait to start.

Math

Evelyn has needed to slow down and practice some of her mental math. She is not as strong at this as her brother. She isn't as mathy as her brother but I attribute it more to the fact that I didn't do RightStart Math with her. I am tempted to reorder book B and spend some time on it with her. However I am not sure she would take it well. She is more of a just-give-me-the-algorithm type of kid than a why-do-we-do-this type. Anyone KWIM??
Quinn whizzed through lesson 13 in 5b after Monday's "I don't remember how to do that!" (which is typical after any time off around here).
Leah has been working on recognizing groups of five or less on the abacus. Evelyn has been teaching her the "Yellow is the Sun" song.

History

We started The Landmark History of the American People. So far I am not finding it as dry as others have warned me.
I finally ordered the Story of the World Audio CDs for Volume 3.

Art

We did some still life watercolors with friends. I love the variety of perspectives and styles!

Quinn's picture

Evelyn's Picture

Katie's Picture

Leah's Picture (she opted to leave the gourd out)

Ryan's Picture

Other

At the recent CBD Wharehouse sale I came across Color the Christmas Classics on the discount homeschool table for 1.99 then I found a second coloring book that was missing the CD for fifty cents. I decided to get it as another fun thing to do during advent. We had fun learning about the first two songs: Angels We Have Heard on High and Oh Come all Ye Faithful.
We started our Jesse Tree. A couple of years ago our church had a Jesse Tree onament swap. It was a lot of fun. We found a lrge branch in the woods and poured some plaster into a beach pail to hold it up. Every night we read the devotional for that night and hang the ornament. Another tradition that the kids really look forward to every year.

Weeks 11 & 12

2010-11-20T20:51:00.000-08:00

Some of our accomplishments this week:

Reading & Writing

Finished Sign of the Beaver
Started The Witch of Blackbird Pond
Evelyn read Meet George Washington, My America: Our Strange New Land
Quinn read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The 39 Clues # 7, Hardy Boys: The Secret Panel (again)
Leah completed a couple of pages in Get Ready for the Code Book A
Read several Thanksgiving themed books to Leah
Evelyn did a few pages in Megawords

Math

Quinn completed several lessons in 5b
Evelyn did several review exercises in Singapore Intensive Practice 1b and completed two lessons in 2b
Leah did some fun sorting exercises in Singapore Earlybird 1a and worked on her abacus games

History

Read Chapter 10 in The Story of the US
Placed several of our timeline figures in our timeline book
Located and colored/added Brazil to our gian wall map as having been acquired by Portugal

Art

Both Quinn and Evelyn did a few of the Mark Kistler Virtual Art Academoy lessons. Of course Evelyn always doodles half the day anyway

Evelyn's fish

Evelyn's Balloons

Quinn's "Alien Blob"

Finger painting

Field Trips

Our history studies coincided perfectly with Thanksgiving AND with our free passes to Plimouth Plantation. We took friends and had fun.

We also made a trip to the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center. We saw the planetarium show Ice Worlds. Quinn also practiced landing the space shuttle. He gets better every time we go.

Week 10

2010-11-06T18:08:00.000-07:00

This week was plagued with illness and rain. Also several trips to the chiropractor for whiplash from my accident last week. Despite all that we managed to get some school work done. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I had bad laryngitis. I get it every year coupled with a chest cold. I was unable to speak at all for those three days. It was extremely frustrating. Needless to say, I didn't do any reading aloud this week!

Reading

For those who are wondering, my daughter spends a

great deal of time on her head. Particularly when reading or listening to

someone read. She can always give a summary of what we were

reading about and in fact seems to be able to pay attention

better if she is allowed to be on her head. Therefore we just let her be.

Evelyn finished Skippack School.
Quinn continued with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
My husband read a few chapters of The Sign of the Beaver for me.
During the past two trips to the library Leah, has been determined to check out the books from the Warrior series. In fact she knows where they are kept and immediately goes to the shelf, takes off all the books in the series, (THERE ARE DOZENS OF THEM) and stacks them up. Evelyn and I decided to check out some more age appropriate books on cats and she has been happily poring over these and listening to us read them to her. She still tries to check out the warrior books every time we go but the librarian knows by now and just tucks them away quietly for us as she is checking us out.

Writing

We started working on Unit III last week. We outlined The Boy Who Cried Wolf (From IEW SWI A). Both kids decided to do major modifications to their stories. Which of course Mr. Pudewa encourages! I did not require all six dress ups however. I don't think either of my kids are ready for that yet. Evelyn is still required an 'ly' and a who/which clause in each paragraph. Quinn is up to four requirements: 'ly' who/which, quality adjective and strong verb. Quinn also added the word 'said' to his list of banned words and found some decent substitutions for his story. I think they are both pretty imaginative and fun for a first UNIT III attempt. Not that I am biased or anything. (Just to let you know, a 'chocodore', which my daughter writes about in her story, is what we call our Chocolate Labrador.) You have to click on them twice to read them. Once to open in a new window and a second time to enlarge or magnify the image...

Math

Evelyn did the first lesson in her new book Singapore 2b.
Quinn finished 5A.
Leah had fun counting and sorting and making a picture graph.

Baggins loves to do school work with Quinn

Memory

The kids reviewed their memory work a few times this week but did not add anything new. The latest things they are working on are The Yak, The Ingenious Little Old Man and Psalm 8.

Bible

We are into Acts chapter 6. We are also listening to John Macarthur's talks on the chapters as we study them. We missed CBS this week though due to no voice!

ART

Last week I decided to order Mark Kistler's Online Art Academy from the Homeschool Buyer's Co-op. It was reduced to a great price for a three year subscription. I think it is still available too if anyone is interested here is the link.It has three different levels of classes. My kids love him. He is very funny and chatty. So this week we did the first several lessons as it was a great thing to do with no voice. Below are some of my kids' pictures though they did lots more of them. they couldn't get enough.
Quinn also does a technical art program called Complete-A-Sketch. It is perfect for him as he likes to use "tools" when he draws and doesn't always desire to be creative on paper.

Quinn's koala

Evelyn's cubes

Evelyn's first koala

Evelyn's second koala

Quinn's sphere

That's pretty much it folks! It was a light week and even as I sit here I am still hacking up a lung! Blah! I look forward to seeing everyone's weekly reports. They are always inspiring!

Wordless Wednesday - November 3, 2010

2010-11-03T17:11:00.000-07:00

Week 9

2010-10-31T12:32:00.000-07:00

What we are reading this week:

Aloud Together: The Sign of the Beaver

Walk the World's Rim

The Story of The USA

Quinn: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

39 Clues #s 4, 5 & 6

Evelyn: The Skippack School

American Girl Series: Addy

Memory work: We added John 1:1-4, The Ingenious Little Old Man and The Yak.

Math: Evelyn finished Singapore 2a. She starts 2b on Monday. Quinn is at the very end of 5a and will finish it this coming week.

This week we visited Apple Crest Farm's Fall Festival

We Hiked Ponemah Bog. The color is well past peak at this point but it was still a beautiful day. The geese and ducks were sunning themselves. The dragonflies were very friendly and playful.

On the way home from the bog we were rear-ended at a stop light. Everyone was alright but Quinn decided to take the opportunity, while waiting for the police to arrive, to finish his math work so that he could cash in some video game time.

We cashed in our first Book-it tickets for the year and met some friends to enjoy the buffet with.

Evelyn always does interesting drawings. Here is one I found in her CBS homework this week. Maybe I am biased but I just think all of the little details and perspective are just great! Notice the words on the t-shirts, the facial expressions, etc... Very cute in my not-so-humble opinion...

A friend brought lots of homemade hula hoops to playgroup. Evelyn had great fun hula hooping around for hours.

The rice tray and sandpaper letters have always been a big hit with the preschool crowd at this house.Leah, our latest childcare addition, is no exception. Hey, even I enjoy running my hands through the rice.

Last week of soccer. Evelyn really enjoyed herself and made great strides in her game this year. Her coach took the whole team and their families our for pizza afterwards.

Weeks 6, 7 & 8

2010-10-22T14:34:00.000-07:00

I have been a bit behind lately! So here is a summary of the last two weeks (or so!).

...Evelyn played a lot of soccer and scored a goal.

...We completed reading aloud The Birchbark House and began Walk the World's Rim and Incas, Aztecs and Mayans. The first two were great! The last one the kids aren't too happy with. I had been warned that it is quite graphic!

...both kids memorized The Jabberwocky and added it to their memory box which is getting pretty full!

....We hiked Temple Mountain

...and Dutton Brook Trail

...The girls baked my friend's Whole Wheat Carrot Snickerdoodle Cookies...They really are good!

...we went apple picking

...Evelyn worked on multiplication. She is just about done with 2a and will be starting 2b within a couple of weeks.

...Quinn completed 15 math lessons. He is working on multiplying fractions and finding the area of a triangle. He only has another week or so before he starts the next book (5b) I also ordered him Life Of Fred Decimals & Percents. I am hoping that the humorous nature of the book will appeal to him and that it will be a great supplement to Singapore 5b.

...Evelyn read The Courage of Sarah Noble , The Matchlock Gun and Vostaas

...Quinn finished reading The Hobbit and wrote a book report using the IEW 5 paragraph (!!!) model. He did well! I did not realize that this was Unit IX until after we started. I then checked with the knowledgeable folks over at the WTM forum and they encouraged me to plow ahead with a simplified version. They were right. He did just fine and even spruced up his writing on his own at several points. I imagine that after this week a three paragraph model will be a relief for him! I required two each of who/which, "ly" and quality adjective.

Quinn read the last two Percy Jackson books and book #3 of The 39 Clues.

Both kids worked on the french verbs "to be" and "to have". They also did much translating back and forth with the vocabulary they have learned so far.

Did lots of art...

Perspective

2010-10-17T05:47:00.000-07:00

          An interesting conversation took place here this past week. The kids received a box of loot from their California grandparents. One of the goodies inside was a book titled Eastern Birds. My son (10) read the title and remarked "Well, we don't live in the east so I guess this won't help us."

           Now, for those who don't know, we live in New England which is indeed the east....Or is it? How embarrassing right? My husband even remarked "Perhaps you should put them in school so they can catch up a bit." He was joking but still it got me thinking. Anyone who knows my son knows that he is very much directionally gifted! He certainly isn't lacking in geography skills. Ever since he was able to sit up he has loved maps. Many well known family anecdotes around here tell of Quinn reading and deciphering maps at an incredibly young age. He can tell people which way to go to get home even from quite a distance away. He has told me which way to go when I am lost on the road, in the woods and can even be trusted to make his way out of a hike on his own. So why is it that my dear son could make the remark that we are not in the east.

            Well, after thinking for a few minutes I realized that it's quite simple really. We AREN'T in the east. At least not if you are thinking from a global perspective. What ten year old thinks from a global perspective you ask? Well if you are homeschoolers you probably aren't asking that question. You probably have a similar situation to ours. My children did not start out their school journey learning about the United States like most children in this country. We began with ancient history and moved on to the middle ages. This year we have just begun to "discover" America. In my kids' minds the United States is not the center of the world. Therefore, as Quinn demonstrated, east and west need not be understood ONLY as related to this country.

Susan Wise Bauer wrote a great little article that succinctly articulates my views on this topic. I think it is a great read for anyone who may not understand my choice to teach my kids about the world in this way.
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/a-classical-approach-to-history/

Wordless Wednesday 9/29/10

2010-09-29T08:20:00.000-07:00

Weeks 4 & 5

2010-09-23T19:32:00.000-07:00

These past two weeks the kids and I have:

...Completed our first read aloud from Core 3, The Secret of the Andes. I enjoyed this book even though it was a little strange. The kids however have deemed it boring.

Started CBS. I am so glad to be back. We are studying the book of Acts this year. It's going to be awesome.

Quinn is reading The Hobbit and has completed several other books. Evelyn finished Squanto and a few others.

...Started our next read aloud The Birchbark House which actually isn't from Sonlight but I wanted to read it anyways. So far so good.

Read Pedro's Journal, placed Columbus in our timeline book and traced his route on our giant map.

...Wrote lots of letters to family and friends. What better way to practice handwriting, spelling, grammar, life skills and of course manners!

...made some good progress in math. Quinn is finally up to completing an entire lesson a day. We were slowly working our way back into things. When he started complaining over having to do a half of a page of work I realized that we would be better off to just jump in all the way.

...Completed two papers mini reports. Quinn wrote one on turtles and one on Sulcata Tortoises. (He got one for his birthday.) Evelyn chose to do one on Labradors and another on jungles. They each completed a key word outline, rough draft and final draft. In addition Quinn was required a who/which clause, 'ly' word and a quality adjective. Evelyn was required a who/which and 'ly'.

...Mostly completed our Native American Dioramas.

Making the base of the terrain

Evelyn's has a river in the middle.

Paper Mache

Painting the base just so that no white will show through.

Evelyn made a weir in her river.

She even stuck some fish in her river before it hardened

Quinn's scene is at the edge of a Great Lake.

Evelyn painting her corn stalks for her "Three Sisters Garden"


Evelyn used a hair dryer to add waves and ripples to the top of the water as it hardened.

Quinn soldered some wires to a light bulb that he painted orange.

We ran out of E-Z Water so Quinn's lake is not filled yet.

Quinn did a great job soldering, wiring and designing his campfire.

Evelyn's Three Sisters Garden: corn, beans and squash (pumpkins)

Week 3 Slow and Steady

2010-09-12T17:30:00.001-07:00

We stepped it up a small notch this week by throwing one small IEW writing assignment into the mix. I didn't put a whole lot of thought into the source text selections. I find that if I try to think about it for too long it doesn't get done. I just grabbed a random paragraph from one of the many Usborne books laying around. Quinn's paragraph was on sea snakes and Evelyn's was on seals. I did the outline with each of them separately. The only dress-up I required was a who/which clause. It went pretty well. Outline and rough draft on Wednesday, editing on Thursday and final draft on Friday.

We continued to work on our Native American dioramas. A few things are left to do for next week but they are very close to being finished.It has been a lot of fun and I look forward to posting a slideshow of the project once they are done!

Soccer started this week

We made some silly postraits with friends.

Week 2

2010-09-04T13:56:00.000-07:00

This week we went on a field trip. I had noticed a while back that our library has passes to Mount Kearsarge Indian Museum. It is a pretty small library and it doesn't have many passes but this seemed to be just the one for us right now! We decided to go Wednesday and prayed for low crowds. Well, not only did we have no crowds but we were actually the ONLY people there during our entire visit. It was so relaxing taking our time to look at everything and talk about things we saw. No lines or packs of noisy kids to push through. Of course this is temporary since it is so early in the year but I will take it for now. Our lives will become super busy in another two weeks when all of our regular activities start up again. So for now I'll take the quiet. Anyone considering this trip should check it out. It isn't huge but it's big enough. Go in nice weather so you can explore the medicine woods.

We also started our Native American dioramas. Evelyn's is almost done. By the end of week three I plan for both to be completed and can post pictures!
Other than history, this week we started L'Art De Lire and are working on learning the basic french vocabulary from that first lesson. We have begun our memory file box that we do every year though we are using a small recipe box this year instead of the giant one. Quinn and I are finishing up a Kay Arthur Bible study on Revelation while we wait for CBS to start. Also, math and dictation have been getting done pretty regularly. Next week has a holiday and a birthday in it however my goal is to add in some basic IEW keyword outlining and rewriting with Who/Which clauses using some usborne science books as sources. That way i will be adding some science and writing at once! If I can accomplish that then we will be getting up to speed pretty well. :)I still haven't decided what to do about science this year so for now we are winging it.

Week 1 Easy Does It...

2010-08-23T19:18:00.000-07:00

Our first week of lessons was low key. Some much needed rain moved in and made for a cozy week of reading and brainstorming ideas. Monday brought a head cold that is typical for me this time of year. I blame it on the change of seasons. Regardless, I was forced to lower my expectations and thus had a very relaxing week of easing back into everything.

I am pleasantly surprised by Quinn's math skills. We did very little review this summer and took more time off than previous years. I gave him some very difficult multiple step math problems that even I had to think about. He did them all correctly and quickly. This is a breath of fresh air for us. Here's praying that it continues.

I can tell that I will need to supplement Evelyn's assigned reading. Sonlight schedules the first literature selection as A Lion To Guard Us for the first two weeks and then Pocohants and the Stranger for the following two weeks. She read them both in one day.

Poor Quinn has found his first two literature books to be "incredibly boring". His first was Mother West Wind's Children and the second was Vostaas White Buffalo's Story of Plains Indian Life. Luckily he has some exciting reading on the side. He has blown through the first few books of the Percy Jackson series and The 39 Clues and has polished off the few remaining Hardy Boys books that he hasn't read. I am blessed to have avid happy readers. It really makes everything else so much easier and more exciting.

Don't get me wrong. We have our own areas of struggle. Quinn's spelling, although vastly improved from previous years, is still light years behind his younger sister's. And Evelyn, well I can't think of any academic issues for her, but she can have quite the snippy attitude lately and can be a very difficult little sister.

Overall I am optimistic that this year will be one of significant growth academically, spiritually and physically for ALL of us. Yes, that includes myself!

I didn't snap too many pictures this week. But here is one of Evelyn in her favorite reading spot. Penny is used to it by now.

New School Year

2010-08-11T17:21:00.000-07:00

It has been a happy yet full summer. So much fun was had. We took a great family vacation to Acadia and had awesome weather. Quinn spent a week at New England Frontier Camp. It was his first sleepover camp. Evelyn took part in the theater camp at a church on our street. They did the musical Rescue in the Night. We ventured to Six Flags, the beach and spent many hot afternoons at Cunningham Pond. And we aren't done yet! In fact the best beach days, in my opinion, are after all the school kids have gone back to their buildings! September has many more hot days, great parking and few crowds. I can't wait!
That said, we will probably start easing back into some lessons soon. We generally don't take quite so much time off at once. This enables us to have three day school weeks through the winter when the kids ski, take spontaneous time off when we need to or feel like it and we don't have to spend a month reviewing everything the kids have forgotten from the previous year. Plus we can start slacking off the moment the spring buds begin appearing in late April. It works well for us.
I haven't formalized all of our curriculum yet for this year. I do know that we will be doing Sonlight Core 3 history and read alouds. Readers will be a compilation of books pulled from both Sonlight and Veritas Press. Math will be Singapore with a little Life of Fred and Keys To... thrown in for older ds. We will be concentrating on the first few units of IEW and continuing our poetry list from IEW Poetry. I will be continuing Spelling Plus with my older non-speller but am considering getting Phonetic Zoo for my younger/natural speller as she is more independent anyways and could use more challenging spelling words. I have a large list of favorite art blogs that I pull great art projects from but my older ds also will be continuing Complete-A-Sketch volume 2. He prefers more technical drawing. DD will be doing soccer and dance and DS wants to join the swim team. They both ski throughout the winter. We will be studying the book of Acts at CBS and I think I have decided on using L'Art de LIRE for french but who knows. Many loose ends to tie up! If anyone has used L'Art de LIRE and has any comments about it that would be great! I will post more when I have figured it out! Happy homeschooling everyone!

Wordless Wednesday 3-31 Playground Flooding

2010-03-31T05:42:00.000-07:00

Skiing 2010

2010-03-10T11:22:00.000-08:00

The kids spent a total of nine weeks at the slopes this year. They each tried snowboarding. Evelyn has now graduated to being able to go up the lifts with her equally sized friends. Though she still enjoys having some of the older girls take her up some more difficult trails. Here are some Pictures I have taken from the past two months.

Kit spent a lot of time hanging out in the lodge

Much fun was had between runs

Card games during the brief indoor breaks

We celebrated at least one birthday

The kids tried snowboarding

2010-03-01T11:10:00.000-08:00

We finished our nine weeks of skiing by taking a trip to Pat's Peak with some friends. The snow wasn't the best. As my friend Winnie put it, "It's like skiing on mashed potatoes.". That's fine by me since it means winter is wrapping up and spring is on its way! The kids found it a little difficult to get any speed though. For Evelyn, my little speedster, this was quite tragic. As the day went on the conditions got better for them as more people compacted the slushy stuff. The boys spent most of the time on the double black diamonds and the girls spent the majority of the time wishing that they could do the same. After all was said and done we had a great time. Though the kids have deemed Crotched Mountain to still be the best. Now I can say, much to Quinn's lament, that I am DONE with skiing for another year. Bring on the heat!

Winter Trip to Ponemah Bog

2010-02-10T18:21:00.000-08:00

We are trying to revisit some of our favorite hiking spots during the winter so we can observe how they are different. This week we had planned to go to Ponemah Bog. Also, Grammy, who has been visiting us for a week had her flight canceled due to snow and ended up venturing out with us. I was so excited that it was snowing. We haven't had much snow lately and I really love these types of winter trips during actual snowfall. It is so pretty and peaceful.

When we got home I had the kids each write a few sentences about their trip.

2010-02-10T10:57:00.000-08:00

We had a field trip to the WMUR television station. It was a big hit with the kids. they got to meet Josh Judge the weather man. He gave us a tour of the building and then showed us the room where they do the weather reporting. He explained and showed off the high tech equipment, answered questions and afterwards let the kids put themselves on the tv map by standing in front of the blue screen. A fun little trip!

Week 17

2010-01-23T06:18:00.000-08:00

Some highlights from this week were:

Our Mariposa Class was titled Animals Across Cultures. We took a look at the Use of Animals cross - culturally in art, household needs, transportation, food, rituals, festivals, and religions. This was very interesting. I always find that the classes compliment our own studies as Sonlight Curriculum has a strong emphasis on learning about other cultures. At the end of this class Terry showed the kids how to make pop-up cards. Evelyn has been making them for everyone ever since.

Evelyn is learning to subtract with trading. We practiced trading one ten for ten ones using our base ten manipulatives.
** Quinn is nearing the end of Singapore 4A already. I have been very pleased with how easily he has embraced fractions. He has successfully learned to simplify, change improper to mixed and vice versa, add, subtract and multiply fractions and much more. Here's hoping that 4B goes as well!

**We are reading Pippi Longstalking aloud this week.

**Quinn is reading Beorn the Proud. I have been taking history and literature selections for Quinn from Veritas Press since they do medieval history in fourth grade. It lines up quite nicely!

WEEK 16

2010-01-17T17:00:00.000-08:00

I know I didn't post anything for week 15 but I have to jump back on the blog wagon where I am. A similar thing happened last year about this time. I posted pictures of us making butter during our Little House in the Big Woods Lapbook project. Next thing you know we were attacked by an ice storm, then came Christmas and by the time I got back to blogging I felt overwhelmed because I had missed so much time and so I stopped blogging for the rest of the year. I really don't want that to happen this year. I really enjoy looking back over my blog at the end of the year and so do the children.

We had an interesting week! A small number of homeschool naysayers have been trying to pass some extremely burdensome laws over the past few years. Last year it was voted Inexpedient to Legislate and so we thought they would leave us alone and start worrying about more pressing issues like the failing public schools. But, low and behold they decided to try again. Only this time they amended the law to make it even MORE onerous. I do in fact enjoy bringing the kids to the State House for things like this. They might as well learn early on not to take freedoms for granted. Especially with the way this country's leadership is headed. So see this weeks " Wordless Wednesday" for some great pictures of the rally. Oh, and the bill was voted down again by an ENORMOUS margin: 324-34. Praise God! Still, i am sure we will have the pleasure of dealing with this again.

I posted checklists on the wall for each of the kids. The checklist shows each subject they are to do during the week and how many times it is to be done. So for instance math, Bible, dictation etc.. are listed as five times. At the end of the week they need to have 5 check marks next to math. Things like Science projects have a goal listed as one or two times a week. I decided to do this for their sake. You would think that after several years my son would know what things he has to do each day but inevitably I hear "What do I have to do today?" (Insert whiny voice here.) or "Can I just do math today?" and other such silly questions. So now that the list is posted on the wall I can simply refer him to it. I put them in sheet protectors so that the kids can use wipe off markers to check things off.

This was week two for skiing.

Wordless Wednesday - January 13, 2010 - Homeschool Rally

2010-01-14T06:57:00.000-08:00

Week 14

2009-12-18T06:31:00.000-08:00

The week before Christmas we...

...worked on building our castles

...learned about what people try to fill their hearts with..and the only thing that truly fits.
...Did a lot of baking

....some math
....some spelling
....read Bartholomew's Passage
....did our Advent Bible Study

52 Books in 52 Weeks

2009-12-14T14:04:00.001-08:00

I have decided to take part in the 52 Books in 52 Weeks Challenge. I have always loved to read. When i was a child you couldn't tear me away from books. Nowadays however, life can get in the way. I still adore a good book but it can be hard to fit it in. Sometimes I am just so exhausted that reading puts me to sleep. Other times I am so worried about wasting precious reading time with a horrible book that I spend far too much time contemplating what to read next. After poring over book reviews and lists for hours I find myself again too tired to read anything else. So maybe a bit of accountability will help.

Haven't quite decided what the first book will be. But I WILL have made a decision by Sunday, which is when the challenge technically starts. I can't wait to hear about what other people are reading!

Week 13 -- Sick Kids

2009-12-12T07:31:00.000-08:00

E started the week with a fever :(. I guess it was bound to happen. She was sick through Wednesday and then Thursday night Q got it. Happily, Evelyn was able to go to her dance recital Friday night. I was worried that she would miss it. Sadly, her brother and father missed it. But, Grammy, Gramps, Auntie and Meme were there.

Before Quinn became sick he did quite a bit of math. He is now doing addition and subtraction of fractions, changing to common denominators, and simplifying. I must admit I was worried when I saw this coming but he has caught on to it VERY WELL.
We did the long bone model in our Human Body Book. Then we did a simple experiment to see why bones are hollow. Quinn accurately predicted that that made them stronger. He said "See! God knew what he was doing!"
We started week 2 of our Advent Bible Study and added it to our Christmas notebooks.
Wednesday we got about a foot of snow dumped on us. I am determined not to complain about the snow this early on. Really, it was a perfect week for a snow storm since we stayed home from all of our usual activities. Quinn went out and enjoyed it. And the puppy went crazy. It was her first real snow. She was loving it (And eating it).

We didn't have any new spelling words this week. I just had Quinn review the old words with two dictation sentences a day.

We read about William the Conqueror and The Battle of Hastings in CHOW and Quinn read also in Our Island Story. The kids each did a narration and picture. (This was Monday morning before I knew that Evelyn had a fever. No...really I am not that mean!). I realized we haven't been putting our figures onto the timeline for a few weeks now. perhaps next week we will get caught up with that.

We did the first two DVD lessons in I Can Do All Things. Evelyn wanted to take part even though she was sick. She loves art. The first lesson had us drawing shoes with laces.

Quinn did a couple geography lessons. He is learning about latitude and longitude now.

That's about it for our week. We stayed home from CBS and playgroup. Co-op is over until January and we missed the lovely Christmas Craft Fair that our home school group puts on every year. Evelyn also missed a birthday party and we didn't make it to the Museum of Science as planned. However we enjoyed some quiet time at home which is pretty rare, believe it or not, for us homeschoolers.

Week 12

2009-12-04T11:00:00.000-08:00

This week marks the end of co-op for the first half of the year. So tonight we had a presentation for the different classes. Grandparents came and it was great fun for all. The Beginning Public Speaking class had each student choose their favorite speech from the class to present to everyone. Quinn chose his Interpretive Speech of Click Clack Moo. Praise God he made it through! He remembered his lines and did all of his motions and voices very well. He even made everyone laugh. After some not-so-great practices this week I was really worried for him and wondering if he should have chosen one of his shorter speeches. But he did great!
Evelyn's Sign Language class got up on stage briefly. Each child introduced themselves and signed their names then they sang the ABC song while signing. It was very nice.

Evely6n's orchestra class did a cute presentation with rhythm sticks

Quinn's rocket class had a display table with bottle rockets and pictures and each child's notebook. They even did a live glow-in-the-dark rocket launch for everyone.
Evelyn's art class displayed all of the work that they have done. Some really great projects!

This week we also began our "Christmas School". In the past we have taken December completely off and focused just on advent. This has made for an extremely relaxing and special time for us. This year we are in such a good groove with our school work that I decided not to completely take the month off. We are however cutting out several things and keeping it simple so we can do some special stuff:

Last year we read Jotham's Journey. It was fantastic and made for some wonderfully snuggly evenings on the couch. This year I ordered the next book: Bartholomew's Passage. So far so good!
I found a FREE advent Bible study that is perfect for the kids. and we completed the first week.

We read about Christmas is Norway. The kids did a small narration about what we read and drew pictures to go with their narrations. We also made a Norwegian Christmas ornament.
Evelyn's narration
Quinn's narration

***We watched several Christmas movies
The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey
Samantha: An American Girl Christmas
The Sound of Music (Yes, I think of this as Christmas, not sure why..)

we also listened to a lot of wonderful Christmas Music. This year I am loving Casting Crowns : Peace on earth

The highlight of my week was when I got my printer cartridges refilled. I came home and spent 2 hours printing stuff. It was awesome. As a result we were able to build our skeleton models this week...

MATH: This week Quinn started doing double-digit times double-digit. I was worried about the multi-steps (multiplying, aligning, adding) but he picked it up quickly and dubbed it "long multiplication". Evelyn is doing very easy stuff right now. I think she'll be done with 1B very soon.

DICTATION: Did 3 out of 5 days worth of dictation. I am planning to spend another week on the same list since we have had a lot of new and difficult words these past few weeks. Thus I didn't mind not getting it all done this week. I have been finding that using multiple colors when introducing new words has been helpful for Quinn.

HISTORY: Did we do history?? hmm... don't remember. I guess it wasn't anything significant if we did...

Reading: Quinn read Trapped in Death's Cave and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane Evelyn read: Chocolate Fever, Hello, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. They each read various smaller books as well.

Quinn finished several Geography lessons.

Evelyn and I baked cookies for the Co-op Presentation
Evelyn drew many Christmas related pictures in her spare time

Week 11 - Short & Sweet

2009-11-28T07:53:00.000-08:00

It was a short week but we crammed in some stuff!

This week Quinn:

**Did two lessons in his geography book.

**Completed lessons 11 & 12 in 4A.

**Wrote a five paragraph rough draft and half of a final draft paper on things he is thankful for using the IEW five paragraph model. He Chose his family, food, and his dog

**Practiced his Interpretive speech for The Fall Showcase.

**Did several devotionals with me from his devotional book.

This Week Evelyn:

**Completed lessons 39-42 in 1B. She finished basic division and is now doing basic fractions.

**Started the weekly lessons in A Reason for Handwriting.

**Wrote a rough draft and half of a final draft on Things she is thankful for. She chose Food, animals and art.

Together We:

**did 4 out of 5 days worth of dictation. This week's list introduced words that start with "wh" like who what when where why etc...

**Read the Bible.

**read more of Twenty One Balloons.

**Read about in Windows of the World.

**Read more of Castle Diary.

**Read more of Usborne Time Traveler: Knights.

**Completed practice lessons S-V in I Can Do All Things.

**Added the word 'smitten' to our vocabulary notebooks

**Watched Liberty's Kids

Wordless Wednesday 11-25-2009 Loaded Baked Potato Soup

2009-11-25T16:05:00.001-08:00

Week 10

2009-11-21T11:13:00.000-08:00

I finally felt better this week. I wish I could say that I had H1N1. It would be nice to check that off the list and be done with it. Unfortunately it was probably just another cold. However I am grateful for a good week. We took Tuesday completely off and went to Pizza Hut for lunch with our Book It tickets then we went to Coco Keys Waterpark with friends. It was great fun!

This week Quinn:

Worked on factors and multiples in math...
Learned about and worked with Topographic Maps in Geography....

Started reading From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Went to Community Bible Study and completed his study of Genesis 19...

Memorized 1 Timothy 4:12 and 1 Peter 3:15...

Practiced his interpretive speech for the coming presentation night.

Practiced drawing circles and ellipses in art

Finished his painting in Drawing class
Launched his rocket in Rocketry Class

Quinn's Rocket

Quinn's Rocketry Class

Completed List 22 dictation. Practiced contractions....

One day of dictation

This week Evelyn:

Completed several lessons in her math book...

Completed all all 20 sentences of dictation from list 22...

Worked on her cursive handwriting:

Completed her CBS homework:

Wrote, addressed and mailed a letter to a friend...

Practiced drawing ellipses and circles and then drew pictures using those shapes in art:
Learned about musical instruments in Orchestra Class...

Painted in art class....

Watched her brother's rocket class launch their rockets:
TOGETHER we:

Started reading The Twenty One Balloons...

Read the Bible...

Read Usborne's Time Traveller...

Drew some pictures from How Great Thou Art...

Added the Feudal System page to our history notebooks...

Went to see My Fair Lady at the Amato Center...

Went to Coco Keys Waterpark...

Went to Pizza Hut with our Book It tickets...

Listened to Skip Count Kids...

Frustrations, Difficulties, Confessions this week:

***Our spelling list this week introduced contractions. This was harder for Evelyn to grasp than I had anticipated. By the end of the week however she was understanding it much better.

*** Quinn announced to me that he no longer knows how to add multiple diggits. I know that he just gets used to doing whatever he has been working on (in this case multiplication and division) and then he needs a little help to switch gears. Still it was very annoying and I wasn't as patient as I could have been. I assigned him three addition problems to do and he had a bit of a fit so I gave him an entire sheet instead. Of course after one problem he had "remembered" how to add but he still had to complete a whole sheet in addition to his regular math work in hopes that he will not raise a fuss over three measly math problems again in the future.

***My printer is out of ink and I am also out of card stock. This is making it harder to do History and science as they both require copying and printing stuff. I hope to rectify the situation this weekend.

***I spilled hot cocoa on my keyboard and had to switch to the kids' keyboard which is this rubbery thing that is very hard to type on. Hence it is taking FOREVER to type this out...

***We skipped our Mariposa class this week for no good reason other than I just didn't feel like going. :(

Wordless Wednesday 11-18-2009

2009-11-18T10:36:00.001-08:00

Week 9 - Sick Again!

2009-11-13T10:29:00.000-08:00

I got hit with yet another cold this week. I don't feel like I ever really recovered from the last cold as I still have coughing spurts some nights and my temp seems to go up a bit when that happens. That has been happening for a month so I finally decided to go to the doctor. Of course she put me on an antibiotic. Did I really think she would have some other idea? I am happy that so far my children seem to be staying healthy.

We still got a surprising amount of school work done considering I was sick again. We stayed home from CBS. I had a friend bring the kids to co-op, another friend took charge of the kids at co-op and playgroup and my dear husband picked them up from playgroup so I could have some quiet time to rest.

Bible: We missed CBS but continued our Bible study to the next week's lesson. We watched Martin! God Loves You. I had planned to watch it for Reformation Day but never got to it. We resumed our reading of the Bible by starting Exodus. I read several chapters to make up for lost time. We are using Day By Day Kids Bible for this.

MATH: Quinn is working on rounding in 4A. He completed exercise 7. Evelyn completed review work and practiced on Rainbow Rock. Evelyn and I played with the base ten set.

Spelling/Dictation: List 21. The kids did all of their dictation this week.

Vocabulary: Both kids consider vocabulary to be a favorite subject nowadays. We managed to do two words this week. I was going to ax it altogether while I was sick just to keep things simple but that idea caused an uproar.

Science: We watched National Geographic: Inside the Living Body (during dinner!) hmmm...I had to pause it during the part on the digestive system while we finished our dinner. It was just too much for me. Then we finished it.

History: Read Usborne Time Traveler: Knights, Chapter 52 in CHOW , First few pages in Castle Diary. We also watched David Macaulay's Castle.

Reading: Evelyn finished Ramona and Her Mother. Quinn Finished Farmer Boy and Lama in the Family.

Read Aloud: We started Twenty One Balloons. Actually Daddy read the first three chapters to them since my voice was not up for it by the end of the evening. Now I need to catch up! It is supposed to be a good book!

Geography. Quinn LOVES his new geography book. He did several lessons this week that involved following a series of directions to make a map in a precise manner. He did very well.

Cursive: Evelyn was getting bored just practicing the letters so I let her skip ahead to some of the word and sentence pages. That made her happy.

Art: By golly we are going to do art today!

Co-op : The kids missed their morning classes as they had to hitch a ride from a friend of mine whose kids do not take morning classes. In drawing Quinn finished his painting. Evelyn painted a picture in her art class also. In rockets class Quinn made his own rocket to be launched next week!

The only field trip we did this week was a trip to the hospital for my doctor visit. While we sat in the waiting room the kids were wide eyed looking at all of the mask covered faces. Presumably H1N1 infected people. We had lunch in the cafeteria afterward which is always exciting! I was just happy to be getting out of the house. Despite what many non-homeschoolers think, we actually are not used to spending a lot of time at home.

week 8

2009-11-07T05:43:00.000-08:00

It feels like it should be week nine! But alas it is only week eight. We took a field trip on Wednesday to Old Sturbridge Village for their fall Homeschool Day.

Bible:
The kids have been doing a good job of getting their CBS work done every week! We are still reading about Abraham. Quinn memorized some verses for his public speaking class. We watched disc 2 of ISRAEL: A Journey Through Time.

Math: Quinn started the first two lessons of Singapore 4A. Evelyn did lessons 34-36 and Review 2 in 1b. We listened to Skip Count Kid 3's and 4's. The songs are sticking which is helping her learn the multiplication problems. Soon I may start doing Times Tales with her.

Read Aloud: started Minstrel in the Tower. A tad fluffy for me. It reminded me of a Magic Treehouse book. Luckily it was short and we read it very quickly. we read about Afghanistan in Windows of the World. It was great because they got to see one of their vocab words, guerrillas, being used!

History: We read Chapter 50 in CHOW on Castles. Did a keyword outline from the chapter summary in the back of the IG.

Geography: I added in geography this week for Quinn. I ordered the book Discovering World Geography Grades 4-5. We received it Friday morning. He was very excited and completed the first 3 activities. looks like it will be a hit for him.

Dictation: list 20 had such words as among, front, second etc.. I was really worried that my non-speller boy would be constantly sticking the letter u in those words but he did quite well. However, I did lose my patience a few times as he continues to spell the word like that: t-h-e-t and get: g-i-t. I have to remind myself that he has made great improvements. Just the fact that he can write a whole page of dictation every day is amazing. And his spelling mistakes are minimal compared to last year. It is hard though as a natural speller, to not get completely frustrated with the same mistakes over and over.

Science: We are on bones again this week.I ordered The Body Book but unfortunately my printer ink dried up so we were unable to do the models this week. We did however do the standard chicken bone in vinegar experiment. The kids enjoyed grossing out their father with the bendy bone on Friday. I guess we will spend an extra week on bones so we can make the model.

Art: We worked on the practice lessons H-M which included adding "meat" to stick figures, train tracks, straight lines and circles etc...

Vocabulary: We only did one new word this week. But we also played a memory game where the kids had to match word to definition of all the words we have done so far. To make it more exciting I added Halloween candy under the cards which they could get if they made a match. I was very lucky that the kids pretty much evened out with their matches. it could have gotten ugly otherwise!

Reading: Quinn is reading Farmer Boy and Evelyn is still working on Ramona and Her Mother

Co-op: Nothing incredibly exciting to note this week... The kids enjoyed their classes as usual

Other: Quinn and his dad have been having a lot of fun on this website building widgets. The solved some puzzles together to earn extra pieces.

Old Sturbridge Village

2009-11-04T05:54:00.000-08:00

Today we headed to Old Sturbridge Village Homeschool Day with friends. It was a ton of fun as usual. But this time my dear friend Winnie surprised me with a hand made prairie dress and bonnet for Evelyn. How blessed I am to have such a thoughtful loving friend! Evelyn is so excited she insisted on wearing it to co-op again today! Anyways, we visited all of our favorite spots in the village. We had great weather especially for November! Next time I will try to sign up for the studios before they are sold out.

Threshing wheat

Luke's awesome outfit

A couple of baby cows that were wandering around the village. The kids got to run through
the field with them..

Week 7

2009-10-31T18:56:00.000-07:00

Chugging right along here. :)

I am trying to do at least one nice hike a week. This week we kept it simple after doing Monadnock last week. We hiked Purgatory Falls in Mont Vernon and we took along some friends. It was very pretty. Waterfalls are always fun to see.
Our October Mariposa class was about Native Americans of North America. The teacher Terry is always so excited to share with the kids. She is very knowledgeable of the cultures she presents. She has a passion that rubs off on the kids...It's great!

I am really hoping to get a new camera for Christmas.
My old one died after many years of faithful service and
now I am stuck using a cell phone camera which is very blurry
and has no flash or zoom. But it is better than nothing right?

Math: Quinn is on the last few lessons of Singapore 3b. I have also been giving him a couple long division problems each day so he won't completely forget how to do them. Evelyn is doing basic multiplication in 1b.

Spelling/Dictation: I messed up last week and reported that we were on list 19. This week was list 19.

Vocabulary: We added a few more words from Elementary Vocabulary Cartoons. The kids come up with their own sentences. Sometimes they are pretty funny. The bear in Evelyn's picture has a pumpkin basket filled with candy. I guess he has been trick or treating. Quinn's picture of a highly fertile garden has one flower in it suggesting some Quinn-ish sarcasm that is very fitting...

Handwriting: Evelyn has asked me to learn cursive which she says is very pretty. Coincidentally I inherited a mound of free homeschooling books from a friend recently and one of the books was the older version of A Reason For Writing: Transitions and Cursive. So I gave her the transitions book and she has been working through the cursive lessons on her own this week.

Art: Even though the kids both do art at co-op we still do art together here. I also inherited the book I Can Do All Things and decided to do that together this week. A friend also lent me the DVD lessons. This week we worked on some of the practice lessons before the actual lessons start.

Science: This week and the next couple are learning about the skeleton. We read pages on bones from Ouch! How Your Body Makes it Through a Very Bad Day. We are waiting for The Body Book to arrive so we can start making our paper model.

Bible: CBS lessons were done.
History: We didn't do history this week

CO-OP
Quinn
Public Speaking: This week was interpretive speeches. Quinn recited Click Clack Moo Cows That type. He did a great job of having different voices for the farmer and the cows. He had some good hand motions and great volume. His memorization was pretty good too. He only got lost a couple of times and picked himself right back up.
Drawing:
Rockets:Kids did some mathematical equations to determine the altitude and velocity of the rockets they blasted off last week. then they made straw rockets and played a game where each team had to try to blow their rocket into a bucket five times. Quinn's team won with Quinn scoring two of the points.

Evelyn:
Art:
Sign Language: Game
Orchestra: Peter and the Wolf

Other
Dance:
Soccer:Last soccer game this weekend. I got a picture with a friend's camera. Will post when I can.

Week 6 : Great Weather, A Hike, Some School

2009-10-23T08:55:00.000-07:00

We were happy to have some wonderful weather this week and we took advantage of it. The highlight of our week was going for a spontaneous hike up Mount Monadnock. It is times like these that I am reminded why I chose this path despite the many hardships and great deal of work. God has truly blessed us.

CBS: Quinn had a lot of great insight into this weeks lesson on Abraham. I feel that my decision to do the writing for him in his CBS work has been confirmed as the right choice. Evelyn surprised me during our hike by pointing out to us how God was rewarding our work by giving us breathtaking views every so often as we trudged up the hard parts of the mountain. She did this just as I was grumbling a bit about how tired I was. Leave it to a child to humble you.

Math: Evelyn is starting multiplication. She is very excited about it. Especially since the lessons require drawing. Today I had to pry the math book away from her. She had already done five pages and was going for a sixth. Still waiting for Quinn's new book. In the meantime he still has a few lessons left in 3b. They are pretty easy, I am not complaining though!

Spelling/Dictation: List 19 introduces the there their and they're so we went over that and continued with our dictation paragraphs. Quinn has a there, their, they're chart on his "wall" so that helped him. I figure he still has to use his brain to figure out which form to use so it's ok if he has the spellings of those words in front of him for now.

Vocabulary: Only did two new words this week: inhabit and culture. Quinn did correctly apply some vocab words from last week however. He pointed out how we were floundering around on the rocky slopes of the mountain and mentioned that Lot had been abducted in our Bible study. Yay for real world application!

Science:Week 3 of science was a continuation of DNA. We read Gene Machines and did a fun chart in the body book where they each checked off what traits they have i.e.: dark hair, brown eyes etc...

History: Still on vikings. Since we have already read all the stuff on vikings that was listed we didn't do much in the way of history this week. We could have made a viking long house but opted to go for a hike and enjoy some splendid fall weather instead.

Reading: Evelyn is continuing Ramona and Her Mother along with whatever else she gets her hands on. Quinn is reading Farmer Boy. It is on his list for this year. At first he was not thrilled because it is related to the Little House on the Prairie books and is therefore a girl book. But he seems to be surviving.

Read Aloud: We are on the last few chapters of Ginger Pye. The goal is to be done by Monday.

Co-op

Sign Language: The kids learned Fall and Halloween signs.

Public Speaking: No speech was due this week but the kids had to bring in the literature selection that they will be performing for next week. Quinn will be doing Click Clack Moo.

Rockets: The kids launched their first round of rockets this week. There was much exhilaration about as each team got to fill their rocket with water, pump air into it, count down and then blast off! It turns out that Quinn was correct when he predicted that his team's rocket would win. With a time of 9.4 seconds it went higher than all the rockets launched in both classes that day.. woohoo!

Drawing: Quinn did a pastel of an antique box

Art: yes

Orchestra: yes

OTHER: No dance this week...overnight at a friend's house instead.

Wordless Wednesday

2009-10-21T13:57:00.000-07:00

Week 5

2009-10-16T12:32:00.000-07:00

I spent this week sick as a dog. Unfortunately I don't get sick time. Life went on as usual.
We even had a lovely hike together on Monday. The only thing I didn't do was CBS. I sent the kids with a friend.

Math:
I ordered Singapore 4A workbook and IG. He will be done with 3A within the next two weeks. I have been giving him some extra multiplication and long division problems in addition to the relatively easy workbook lessons. I really wouldn't want him to forget that stuff.
Evelyn is understanding place value better. I busted out my RightStart place value cards. (I am so glad I kept them!) and had her make numbers for me. I then asked her to tell me what number was in such and such place. It was fun for her and she kept asking everybody to give her a number to make all day. So nice to have a child who is easily motivated!

Spelling/Dictation:
List 18 Spelling Plus . We did paragraphs this week. The sentences are noticeably longer now.

Vocabulary: We added this in this week. I ordered Vocabulary Cartoons Elementary edition. I had seen the high school version a long time ago and really like the concept. I didn't know that it came in an elementary edition until recently. I figure we will do one Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. We did the first three this week. After looking at the cartoon together I had them write the word in their book, come up with their own sentence about it and draw their own picture. They seemed to enjoy this. Even Quinn didn't complain too much about the additional writing.

History: Sonlight is still on Vikings. I ordered a couple videos from Netflix since my kids both already read the corresponding Time Traveler pages. We watched Globe Trekker Iceland and Greenland. This had a tad about vikings but mostly just showed what the lands are like now. I also ordered Nova: Vikings. The kids only watched half of this since it was late. My husband and I watched the rest and decided they probably didn't need to watch the rest of it. It got a little graphic about human sacrificing and some other things. I probably wouldn't have minded if they saw it but there wasn't going to be enough time for the next few days and I figured why hold up the Netflix queue?? I think the Imax Vikings video was much better and less graphic.
We also read Eric the Red and Leif the Lucky and did the SOTW Vikings Map work.

Science: Week two of science we read about DNA. We read Have a Nice DNA. We made some DNA from Twizzlers and multicolored marshmallows. The different colored marshmallows stood for the different chemicals and we had to match them up appropriately. This project is free here. We followed this up with the DVD Unlocking the Mysteries of Life. It was the perfect compliment not only to the science topic but also to the chapter in The Case For Faith that Quinn and I are reading together on how the language of DNA points to a creator.

Bible: I have started doing the writing for Quinn's lesson for him. I have him look up the verses and give me the answers. He was so overwhelmed by the amount of writing in the junior book that he was dreading doing his Bible study. I really don't want that. I want him to enjoy it. I also don't want him truncating his answers so that he has less to write. I want him to be thoughtful about the answers no matter how long it might be. He has always enjoyed learning about God in the past and I don't want to ruin that. He has to write for several other subjects and that is enough for now. Evelyn is in the primary class and that book requires less writing but of course she loves to write so it wouldn't matter anyways.

Read Aloud: Still on Ginger Pye. I was sick all week and even lost my voice for several days which made it hard to do a lot of reading out loud. Jonathan did do two chapters so we didn't get too far behind. We also did our other standard read alouds. Windows of the World this week was about Animism and Buddhism which made for some GREAT conversation.

Co-op
Art: Yes
Drawing: yes
Dance: yes
Public Speaking: This week Quinn had to do an extemporaneous speech. His was about whether or not our town should ban dogs from being on the bike path. His memorization was great and he had great volume and even used a hand motion or two.
Rockets: The kids started building their first set of water bottle rockets.
Sign Language: Evelyn learned a song about colors and has been practicing the color signs with that song.
Orchestra: The kids were supposed to make an instrument at home to bring in. Evelyn made a rain stick and then put paper mache over it. She still needs to paint it.

Late Auntumn Nature Hike

2009-10-13T13:32:00.000-07:00

We decided to go for a nature hike today after doing some book work. We hiked Ponemah Bog in Amherst. It is a short hike but very pretty and serene. Quinn loved the boardwalk. The moment he saw it he became incredibly excited. I encouraged the kids to use all of their senses to observe their surroundings. Evelyn drew several pictures of things she saw and heard.
We saw some really neat plants like the pitcher plant.
We tasted some wild cranberries and heard some happy birds singing. Of course the air smelled just like fall should!

Week 4

2009-10-09T17:07:00.000-07:00

We had some fun this week. We enjoyed apple picking, a corn maze two birthday parties, some school and a few fun projects.

Math: Quinn is nearing the end of 3B and they are now reviewing "time". You would think this easy for a fourth grader but in a world filled with digital clocks he has much less practice actually figuring out the time than I had as a kid.
I am wishing that I had kept RightStart level A for Evelyn. I really liked the way it explained place value and trading or borrowing. Ah well....we do still use the abacus though and it provides great visual examples of concepts for her. She also spent some time on Rainbow Rock.

Spelling/Dictation. This week we did list 16 in Spelling Plus. I attended a class on right brain learning this week also and decided to try to follow some of the instructor's hints for making words into stories and pictures. I know that this does help for Quinn since we did Times Tales for multiplication and that is virtually the same thing. But I was inspired and decided to try it with spelling words. This week's list contained words like: talk, walk, war, warm, large etc... For walk I made the 'w' black the 'a' was bright red with an extra thick tail and had a sad face. The 'l' was green and had squiggly lines around the edge and the 'k' was wearing sneakers on his feet. I then went through a story with them about how the a was sad and the l was shaking and nervous because he is worried that you will leave him out of the word because he is silent. The 'k' of course has his shoes on because he is going for a walk. Talk was the same except the 'k' was talking, saying hello. Quinn really eats this stuff up. He loved it with Times Tales too. Both kids really enjoyed all of the stories I made(though Evelyn is a natural speller anyways and doesn't need funny stories.) Quinn really did show an improvement when it came time for the dictation. He still forgot some stuff but he remembered things he would normally forget instantly. Like the 'l' in talk and walk.

Science:We finally received our science books in the mail. We are doing anatomy this year and plan to follow this free science schedule that some very gracious woman made and posted. So I ordered the books and this week we started by reading Enjoy Your Cells . We also watched some of the Brain Pop videos about cells and played some of the recommended games:
Explore a Cell
All Systems Go

History: Vikings! The kids wee very excited to read about vikings this week. We Read from Child's History of the World, Story of the World, Usborne Time Traveler, and Usborne World History. We also watched a free online Imax video about vikings and we built viking ships from SOTW activity book. We listened to SOTW audio from the beginning up to where we are now. It was good review.

Read Aloud: We began Ginger Pye this week. This is one I never read. I hope it doesn't end the same way virtually all dog stories end :( ...Reading: Quinn read Guardians of Ga'Hoole book 1 and Evelyn read Ramona Quimby Age 8. they also read numerous other small books throughout the week. We went on our first Pizza Hut Book It trip.

Piano: Quinn's teacher and I have decided to take a break from piano lessons. He feels badly about it like he failed or something but he just needs to step back for a bit. I really feel like he needs to work on his note reading 'til it becomes second nature. Until then I don't need to be paying 20 bucks a week. I can find ways at home to help him with this. I think we will re-instate Music Ace Deluxe for a while.

Dance: Evelyn is loving dance!

Co-op
Drawing: Quinn settled on drawing one of his more complex balsa wood airplanes. This is it.He is not changing it again.
Rockets: yes
Public Speaking: This week was impromptu speeches. The kids had to pull a topic out of a hat and speak on it with only one minute to prepare. Quinn pulled the topic of education. It was brief and silly but then again so were all of them... I can see how impromptu can take some serious experience to be good.
Sign Language: yes
Art/Music: yes

Apple Picking

2009-10-05T17:45:00.000-07:00

We did our annual apple picking day at Windy Hill Orchard in Greenville. Unfortunately they didn't have a great year and we had to use picking sticks to get the apples off the top. Of course the kids were thrilled to be armed with long spikey sticks. And it did prolong the apple picking a bit since it took them longer than usual to get the apples. I am not sure what the problem was for them because I have since heard that all of the other apple orchards around have had a plentiful crop. We had fun anyways.

The corn maze was the highlight of the day as usual. Though it seemed to be easier than last year. Several kids were out of the maze in a matter of minutes. We told them to go back in and take a different route this time.

Week 3

2009-10-03T06:21:00.000-07:00

Things are settling in more this week. I seem to have a better handle on the schedule now. The beginning of the week was a tad rocky though. Both kids had eventful weekends and it showed with the way Monday dragged. My patience was tested several times throughout and I didn't always pass. With a lot of prayer we made it through and have some stuff to show for it.

Math: Quinn (end of 3B) seems to be grasping the concept of equivalent fractions better than I thought he would. However when it came time for a review lesson I noticed that he had completely forgotten how to do long division. (patience testing time!) Of course, the info was still in his brain I just had to find a way to pull it out. I know that it is the numerous steps involved that he has trouble with. It boggles his mind to think about it all at once. I'm trying to help him to only think about one step at a time. His memory seemed to come around by the end of the week.

Evelyn (middle of 1B) is learning double digit subtraction. It has been hard for me to fight back the urge to just teach her the way I was taught. I know that eventually she will learn that way but that it is in fact beneficial to learn the mental way first. It will help her to understand it better....right??

Read Aloud: We finished Red Sails to Capri. It was not one of the easier read alouds we have done. There is a lot of tricky dialogue. But the story is great and the kids really liked it. We looked up pictures and videos of the Blue Grotto online after. Quinn says he wants to go there.

Blue Grotto Wikipedia Entry

Spelling: We do spelling through dictation with a neat program called Spelling Plus. It introduces 20 new words every week and then you learn them by writing meaningful sentences that spiral the new and old words in a perfect way. This has been the most helpful for Quinn who is NOT a speller.

History: This week we read about Charlemagne and Alfred the Great. For Charlemagne we did a keyword outline and then wrote it out. For King Alfred I had them do a one sentence narration afterward and they drew a picture to go with their narration to put in their notebooks. Quinn read three chapters on Alfred in Our Island Story. He says King Alfred is cool...

Bible Study: CBS is going well. We all seem to be keeping up with our homework.

CO-OP
Quinn recited a joke called "These Ducks Want Books" for his humorous interpretation speech. He did pretty well. This time he even remembered to do some of his hand motions. His volume was perfect and stumbled minimally.

Evelyn is learning tons of new signs in sign language class and she loves it.

Quinn's rocket class was spent learning that rockets don't fly and why they need nozzles. There was much saliva involved..ick!

Evelyn's art class produced some beautiful butterflies that they have been working on for a while now.

Quinn brought his skateboard for a still life in art and ended up deciding that it was too difficult. I need to help him find something else. He is usually very good at drawing rockets and ships...

Week 2

2009-09-27T19:47:00.001-07:00

This was a slightly more difficult week. We had several unanticipated extras that came up so I feel like I haven't stopped moving all week. Still we managed to get a good amount of schoolwork done.

Math: Still moseying along with easy fraction stuff. I had some good times to sit with Evelyn and work on her stuff.

History: This week was Muhammad much to Quinn's lament. I gave the kids their picture to add to their history notebooks. Evelyn usually likes to color hers. Quinn usually just plops his in unadorned. This week he decided to voice his disgust with Islam by labeling his picture with negative comments. Yes, my son CHOSE to write something!! I was so excited!He even spelled everything correctly! I praised him heartily and pointed out that we can't just ignore historical events we don't like.

We got our keyword outline done but our writing will have to extend to next week. The kids drew a picture of a mosque.

Co-op

2009-09-24T17:22:00.000-07:00

Co-op today was interesting. Quinn did his expository speech on Ball Pythons and therefore Squeeze accompanied him to classes. He figured he might as well use the snake as his "still" life subject for drawing class too. The speech was good but the snake was not a very "still" object to draw. Next week he will bring something else. Everyone enjoyed holding Squeeze after classes and he was a good sport. He allowed dozens of kids to handle him. He didn't even bite anyone!

Rockets Class: The kids pushed each other on skate boards with various weights and then measured how far they were able to go depending on the weight. They also did a similar experiment afterward with balloons.

Evelyn is learning so quickly from her sign language class. She can do the whole alphabet on her own and most of the colors. She also remembers a lot of the various other signs from her classes every week. She finger spells everything now and even has started finger spelling messages to me from across the room rather than coming and speaking to me.

Week One Down

2009-09-19T09:18:00.001-07:00

We had a fabulous, though chaotic first week. Everyone got back into the swing of things more easily than I anticipated... including myself!

Math: Quinn is starting fractions in Singapore 3B. So far it is pretty easy but looking ahead it will be getting more difficult soon. For now I am happy with the easy stuff. We reviewed times tables a few times and he did well. Evelyn is working on carrying in Singapore 1B. She is grasping it well. We had left off here last spring and worked on basic math facts for a while. Now she seems ready to move forward.

Spelling/Dictation: I love love love Spelling Plus. It has helped my son's spelling better than anything else we have tried(and we have tried a lot of things!!). We do 4 dictation sentences a day. Both my kids are on the same list which makes it easy. We went back a couple of lists to #13 just to review a tad. Like usual Evelyn is able to write a sentence very quickly while it takes Quinn a lot longer. Though he has improved his time considerably since last year.

History: We started out Core 2 by reading about Benedictine Monks in CHOW, Usborne and SOTW

Writing: We did a keyword outline from the Sonlight summary. By the end of the week they each had a two paragraph paper (rough and final drafts!) to add to their history notebooks. We added Benedict to our timeline.

Reading: Our read aloud this week is red Sails to Capri. I didn't so much like it at first but it is getting better. Both kids reading independently. Evelyn devours a good sized book every day. She is currently reading the Ramona series. Quinn is reading the Guardians of Ga'hoole series.

Bible: We all had our CBS homework done by Tuesday and continued to work on the next week's homework every day.

Art: Quinn is taking a drawing class at co-op This week they did a still life of some pumpkins. Evelyn is taking Art Through Literature.

Music: Evelyn is taking a music class at co-op and Quinn is continuing piano lessons.

Science: Quinn takes a rockets class at co-op. They are learning about Newton's Laws in preparation for building their rockets.

Miscellaneous :
- Quinn started a public speaking class at co-op. The first assignment was a recitation. Quinn recited "After the Paty" by William Wise. We had learned it last year from our IEW Poetry program. He did well reciting it but didn't do any of the hand motions he had practiced. I think he just got nervous..

-Quinn and I are going through Lee Strobel's Case for Faith for Kids. It has been fun hearing him come up with examples of the Kalam Argument throughout the week. He has been excited to do this and it helps him understand more when he is listening to Stand To Reason with me... (which he loves!)

-The kids took a class at the Mariposa Museum about kids around the world. they learned about different games, stories, clothes and other things that kids do in various cultures.

-Evelyn started dance classes. Her teachers are a couple of teenage girls who seem to be enthusiastic and very friendly with the kids.

Co-op

2009-09-17T18:19:00.000-07:00

This morning we squeezed as much in as we could before heading to our second week of co-op. We finished Bible study and dictation and some math.

At co-op Quinn recited his poem "After the Party" in public speaking class. He did a still life drawing of some pumpkins in drawing class and learned about Newton's second law of motion in his rockets class. Evelyn learned many new signs in her sign language class. She was teaching them to us during dinner and also taught the town clerk a few signs while registering the car with Daddy. She is very excited! It is amazing how quickly she picks it up! She also says that she really enjoyed her art and music classes.

Wordless Wednesday

2009-09-16T17:44:00.000-07:00

2009-09-16T05:26:00.000-07:00

This morning I awoke to Quinn shoving his math book in my face and announcing that he had completed his lesson. One may not understand how incredible this occurrence was. However, Quinn is not known for motivation or the ability to look ahead and strategize. This is the second day in a row that Quinn decided he was going to get his school work done early so he would be able to play sooner. His motivation this morning was to be able to ride his bike over to the Museum where they take classes once a month. Needless to say it was a shocking but welcome start to my day. We did complete the rest of our work in a timely manner and Quinn was able to leave early and ride his bike to the class.
Our class this month was about Children Around the World. It was very interesting and as usual the teacher had a ton of enthusiasm which always rubs off on the kids.

First Day

2009-09-14T10:58:00.001-07:00

Well, our first day of lessons has come and gone and it went very well. We went out for breakfast at the Bagel Mill and got all of our lessons done by 12:30. Then we headed to Twinkle Town for lunch, a round of mini golf and ice cream. After that I decided to go grocery shopping so that we wouldn't keep eating out.The sunshine was plentiful and begged us to be outside so we were.

The mini cubicles came in very handy. I caught Evelyn practicing her sign language alphabet in between dictation sentences while she waited for her brother to be done. (That can take some time!) Quinn utilized the writing checklist after he was done his writing to find out that he had forgotten all of his punctuation and most of his capitalization BUT had in fact used his very best handwriting. He was able to fix everything on his own without me telling him. What a spectacular feeling!

We did our first key word outline on Benedictine Monks after reading our section in CHOW. I realized to my amazement that Sonlight provides little summations of the readings in the notes section and we did our outline from that. Coming up with three key words per sentence proved to be pretty simple for both kids and by the end they wanted to do another! They were able to tell back the information after with no problems and even added their own articulation. Something tells me Quinn won't be so motivated at the end of the week when we get to write up the paper but I am pleased with the excitement level today.

CBS homework was a lot easier with the new handy dandy booklets that they put the lessons in. I am very excited about this change. They even added a splash of color.

Our new read aloud Red Sails to Capri is even pretty exciting already. We read the first chapter and then Quinn finished reading the book on his own.

We kept math short an sweet so as not to ruin the day completely. I was relieved to see that Quinn still remembered his times tables despite the longer than usual break.

Overall I have declared today to be a success!

Mini Cubicles

2009-09-12T12:55:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across these on someone's blog a while back and instantly I knew that they were the answer to all of my problems. Actually the are called Mini Offices but I thought the term Cubicle was more encompassing of the many functions they serve. My husband came up with the idea of using tag board instead of the multiple file folders glued together that we saw in the other examples. I am glad he did because they are much more sturdy (and taller!) . They are a great way to block out distractions from around the room and each other. They also contain many useful tidbits of info that they seem to need on a regular basis. In theory they will commit some of the info to memory more easily now that it is right in front of them. I will let you know how that goes! On Evelyn's Board I put a hundreds chart which is useful for visualizing addition and subtraction, a money chart, place value chart and clock diagram. I also put a sign language alphabet since she is taking that at co-op this year and a cursive alphabet since she is determined to write in cursive now. I made a handy dandy picture of the word "bed" with a picture of someone sleeping. Both of my kids tend to reverse their b's and d's. Telling them to picture the word "bed" always helps them. (If you turn the b or d around the bed falls down) However, I always had to remind them to do it until now! Yay! I printed out history figures from our Homeschool in the Woods CD that correspond with the various people and events we will be reading about this half of the year. (Not sure what I will do after Christmas!) On Quinn's board I cut out miniature pictures of the Times Tales stories so he can refer to them when he needs. Although he knows most of them already.

Other resources I either made myself or downloaded from the following links:
http://www.busyteacherscafe.com/teacher_resources/mini_offices.htm
http://www.teachingheart.net/minioffice.html
http://www.jmeacham.com/mini.offices.htm
http://www.squidoo.com/minioffice
http://www.abcteach.com/directory/teaching_extras/mini_offices/
http://www.mrsdryzal.com/minioffice.html

A Fresh New Year with No Mistakes in It...Yet

2009-08-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

We are commencing our fourth year of homeschooling! Following our latest furlough I have found myself with renewed fortitude, a sunnier perspective and yet another blog change. Yes, once again I have made the decision to switch blogs. Hopefully I will be more consistent this year about updating our happenings as it can be great fun to reminisce with later on!

This week we are decluttering the pertinent areas of the house and organizing our books. Quinn is very happy to be doing the Middle Ages this year as we have spent two years on the ancients. This was to our benefit as I was able to add Evelyn on to Core 1 and now they are both on the same page as far as history and read-alouds go.. Isn't that spiffy? I thought so! Anyways, so we have been packing away all of our stuff on Rome, Greece and Egypt and replacing it with Beowulf, Charlemagne and Marco Polo. It should be fun! In fact, this week Quinn started reading Story of the World volume 2 on his own because he just couldn't wait for the rest of us. Don't worry, there will be plenty of whining and complaining coming from his corner when it comes time to start math and writing again.

I had been hopeful to start next week but we have so many not-back-to-school extravaganzas planned that school just isn't going to fit into the schedule. It looks like we will be starting the following week which is when co-op, CBS, AWANA, playgroup and everything else starts anyways. Might as well begin with a bang!